eircom announces launch of own-brand mobile service

Ireland’s Sunday Business Post writes that the country’s incumbent PTO eircom is to launch its own mobile phone brand at the end of this month, initially aimed at the corporate market. It will initially target 8,000 SMEs with the eircom Mobile brand in a low-key launch, with a larger consumer rollout to be scheduled ‘at a later stage’. The Irish telco paid EUR420 million (USD571.6 million) for Meteor Mobile in 2005 and plans to resell Meteor airtime for its new service focusing on customers where its own eircom brand loyalty is high. However, a spokesman for the firm said the move was in no way a shift away from the Meteor brand. ‘The Meteor brand is not going anywhere, he said. ‘Meteor is very, very strong and we won’t be doing anything to affect the brand.’ The unit has more than 800,000 users but targets the younger end of the mobile market making it less attractive to the business community, eircom said.